


this assembly singing of gratitude

by leiascully



Series: New York AU [10]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-04
Updated: 2010-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's good to hear your voice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	this assembly singing of gratitude

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: [NY AU](http://leiascully.livejournal.com/tag/au:+new+york), following [Visions of Good Times](http://leiascully.livejournal.com/715902.html)  
> Pairing: Bill/Laura  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Wordcount: 3075  
> Concrit: Welcome  
> A/N: For my dear and delightful [**dashakay**](http://dashakay.dreamwidth.org/), whose charity regarding [**help_haiti**](http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/) and life in general knows no bounds. ♥ Title's from Jason Mraz's "Make It Mine".  
> Disclaimer: _Battlestar Galactica_ and all related characters belong to Ronald Moore, NBC Universal, Sci-Fi Channel, and Sky One. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The phone rings and she picks it up and says, "You've reached Laura Roslin, Assistant Secretary of Education for the New York School District. How may I help you?"

"You've already eased my mind about whether I had the wrong number," says a rumbling voice that she recognizes immediately. "It's good to hear that you still have a job. This is Bill Adama, by the way."

"It's good to hear your voice," she says. "I promise I don't always answer my cell phone that way. I have some semblance of a personal life."

"I shouldn't have called you during the work day," he apologizes. "Obviously you've got that on your mind."

She blows out a breath. "Yes, well. For now. If you hadn't called until next week, who knows?"

"If I hadn't called until next week, I doubt you'd have answered," he says, and she laughs.

"Maybe not."

"What will you do?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she says, pushing her hand through her hair. "Not right now."

"How about over dinner?"

She checks her computer - it's only 11:30. "You could have had lunch."

He chuckles. "I didn't know if you were the spontaneous type."

"I didn't know you weren't the ambitious type." She leans back in her chair and spins idly back and forth, feeling like she's back in high school. Her stomach is doing giddy little flips.

"You're a teacher," he says in that gravely voice. "You know there's an underachiever in every class."

"Only in your professional life, I hope," she teases.

"Dinner's better," he says. "You would have had to rush back to work if we'd done lunch. I like to take my time."

She pictures his face between her thighs, a glint in his eyes as he brushes his mustache lightly across her skin to make her squirm. Oh, no, she doesn't expect that he's an underachiever, even if he's only a rear admiral. She expects him to take her all the way. She catches herself twirling her hair around her finger. Apparently her frustration with work leads to other kinds of frustration. Well, why shouldn't it? She hasn't been kissed since one of her old students managed to pick her up in a bar after her sister's baby shower, not that she recognized him at first. But there's something about Bill. "You have a point," she tells him. "I suppose I'll give you a pass this time."

"I didn't wait a week to call," Bill reminds her. There's a delicious promise in his voice. "What time are you free for dinner?"

"Six forty-five," she says. "309 East 5th Street. If you're not there on time, I'm getting takeout."

"Aye, sir," he says, and she'd be lying if she said it didn't give her a little thrill to imagine him subservient to her will. Her title hasn't meant much for a while - it seems as if half the office is allied against her. But she's the one who resolved the strike - she's the one who got the teachers back in the classrooms. It doesn't make sense that she might be out on her ass next week, or the week after, or whenever Adar decides that he's finished with her. She shouldn't have slept with him. She knew that before it began. This feels different.

"Then it's a date," she says, daring a little.

"I hope so," Bill says. "You've met Saul - I don't need any more friends."

She giggles and catches herself. "That's almost sad."

"Yeah," Bill says. "Especially when his wife's around. Maybe I should reconsider. I might need a friend in New York."

"I guess we'll just have to see how it goes," Laura says.

"One bite at a time," Bill agrees.

"Six forty-five," Laura reminds him. "I want to catch the early bird special. Lord, that makes me sound old, doesn't it?"

"Just frugal," Bill assures her. "309 East 5th Street. Got it."

"Streets aren't avenues," she tells him.

"I think I picked up that much on the cab ride to my apartment," he says wryly. "I'm not entirely unworldly."

"I'll see you this evening, then," she says, and bites her lip.

"I wouldn't miss it," he assures her. "Until then."

She hangs up without saying goodbye, because she doesn't really know what to say. She doesn't want this to turn into an adolescent "you hang up first" sort of a conversation, but she doesn't want to stop talking to him either. She pushes her hair out of her face and sighs, trying to pull herself together. She met Bill last week - there's no reason she should feel so attached to him. It doesn't make sense. But hearing his voice was incontrovertibly soothing. It's as if she's listening to her mother talk about love again, how situations sneak up on you and you've got to take advantage of them.

She ruffles her fingers through her hair again and tucks her phone away in a drawer. She's got to get through the rest of this work day first - teachers with problems, parents with petitions, paperwork everlasting, all the little housekeeping duties of administration. She misses the simplicity of the classroom sometimes, the genuine interactions she had with the children, but compared to this, that was small-scale. Here she knows that she is helping many people, maintaining the structure that lets teachers work. The weight on her shoulders is greater, and she didn't ask for it, but she will bear it as long as they allow her to. If Adar fires her tomorrow, well, she'll find a classroom, and she'll be happy. As it is, she has a job today and a date tonight and that should be enough.

Laura puts Bill out of her mind and gets back to doing the work of the people. She keeps steadily occupied until six, and then she saves everything, closes her laptop, shuffles papers precisely into file folders, makes sure that they're properly labeled, makes a note to herself about something to look up and someone to call in the morning. She walks to Grand Central and lets a few trains go by, then catches the Six to Astor Place. Still a little early, but she doesn't mind. She didn't want to leave herself time to go back to her apartment before dinner, where she would have only fretted over her outfit, teased her hair too much, and likely not gone at all. She would have called her sisters instead and told them about she ought to have been on, and they would have scolded her. Instead, she opens the door of Soba Koh and gets a table with a view of the chef rolling and slicing dough into slender noodles. The waitress brings her the house sake and Laura sips at her tiny cup as she waits.

Bill is prompt. He walks in the door at 6:40 and sees her immediately. From behind his back, he brandishes a small fistful of flowers.

"A thank you," he says in his deep voice that rumbles in unexpected places in her body, spaces between bone and muscle whose emptiness she has not noted in a long time.

"You didn't have to," she says, touched.

"It's been a long time since I had dinner with a woman who wasn't in uniform and didn't have to obey my orders," he says.

"Well, that certainly won't be a problem," she says.

"You're probably more likely to give orders than take 'em," he says.

"Years at the head of the class will do that to you," she says. "And I still have the paddle my mother gave me when I finished my certification."

"I'll be on my best behavior," he promises, but the twinkle in her eye gives her hope. The waitress brings him a cup and he tips sake into it. "So what are we eating tonight?"

"Soba," she says. "Buckwheat noodles. I like this place the best, but the portions are small, so the early bird dinner is the safest bet. First they'll bring us a salad with radish and bonito, then there's an egg custard, then soba - that's the noodle soup, and you can have it hot or cold, and that comes with tempura, and then we get dessert." She's talking just to fill the silence, but he doesn't seem to mind.

"Early bird special, huh," he says.

"Prix-fixe, if you don't want to sound hopelessly old," she says. "Oh, lord. I can't believe I asked you to the early bird special."

"Prix-fixe is fine," he says, butchering the French, but somehow she doesn't mind. "We're not ancient yet."

"I hope not," she says, crossing her legs. The toe of her shoe brushes his shin, and she blushes. He just smiles and pours them both more sake.

"Thanks for explaining the menu to me," he says.

"Oh God," she says, "I hope you're not an expert on Japanese food, or grew up there, or something along those lines. I'll feel so wretchedly stupid."

He laughs. "I've been on rations so long I don't know what real food tastes like anymore. I like noodles, though."

"A friend who spent years in Japan told me this is the most authentic place she's found in New York," she says, "but I admit, I wouldn't be able to tell you the difference. I like watching them cut the noodles, and I like that it's less popular."

"Plenty of food for the price, sounds like," he says. His sake cup looks like a doll's cup in his big hand.

"A bonus on an administrator's salary," she admits. "So tell me about yourself."

"Not much to tell," he says. "Been a Navy man as long as I can remember."

"Why'd you join up?"

"Teenage rebellion, what else?" he says, taking another swallow. "Father was a lawyer. I didn't want to join the business. Fortunately, I remembered that when my boys came of age. Of course, it was selfish on my part - I didn't want them in the Middle East."

"So what do your sons do instead?"

"Lee, he's the oldest, he's a translator at the UN. Zak's in finance on Wall Street." He grins. "Both of 'em fine strong men now. They're doing what they wanted to. Showin' their old man up. How about you?"

"No kids, never married," she says.

"Good," he says. "Marriage is a sucker's game." He shakes his head. "I don't mean that. Mine didn't work out, but that doesn't mean it's not good for others. Hard to make it work with a couple of oceans between you, and I don't just mean geographically."

"Well, I've never even been close," she says. "So you have the advantage of me there."

The waitress brings the salads and Laura wants to bless her. She has prided herself all her life on her way with words and now she's got her foot in her mouth. She picks up her chopsticks and lifts a bite to her mouth. The salad is delicious; the dressing scours her sinuses with wasabi fumes, and somehow that breath of heat in combination with the smooth bite of the sake is just what she needed. She lets go. She lets go of Richard and his expression every time he looks at her. She lets go of the way her sister's face glows when she talks about the baby, and the slightly pitying look Laura always gets at family gatherings. She lets go of all of it; she stops caring about what she's saying and just lets herself eat and drink and talk to Bill.

"Tell me about ships," she says, picking up another bite of salad. "I have a cousin in the Navy, so I know a little, but I'd like to hear more."

"I don't want to monopolize the conversation," he says. "Seems unfair."

"Bill, I don't want to talk about my work. Take me away."

He has a very charming chuckle, she thinks. "Whatever you want, Laura."

"I want to smell the ocean," she says.

The waitress brings the chawanmushi and Bill starts to talk. Between bites, he tells her about the time he almost fell down a ladder, when he was an ensign. He tells her about bioluminescent algae in the wake of the ship in the Caribbean. He tells her about seeing dolphins leaping. The waitress brings soba and tempura - Laura hardly notices, just lifts the hot tender noodles to her mouth. Bill tells her about shore leave in Bangkok, the neon dazzling after the dark of the ocean. He tells her about storms. He tells her about the sailors he's known, the young officers who grew up strong, about young officers who never had the chance to grow up. He has been a teacher too, she thinks. She fishes a fragment of pumpkin from the bottom of her bowl and washes it down with sake.

"You haven't lived until you've seen the green flash," he says.

"The green flash?"

"Some people say it's just a myth," he says, "but I've seen it. Sometimes, at sunset, when the sun's sinking into the ocean, at the moment it disappears, there's this incredible blast of green light, almost blinding. It's like something out of another world."

"Mmmm," she says. "I hope I see it someday. God, don't you ever wish you could just start over somewhere else?"

"That's been my life for the past forty years," he says, grinning.

"I wish there were another planet," she says wistfully.

"I'm gonna call you Horatio if you keep that up," he teases her.

"Horatio?" Her head tilts as she looks at him. The waitress clears their bowls away.

"More in heaven and earth than you can dream of," he says, "or didn't you think I'd read Shakespeare."

"What else is there to do on a boat?" she jokes.

"Ah, you saw through all my tales of glory," he says in his rumbly voice, sounding pleased.

"You and I both know that a job, even a job you love, is eighty percent filling time," she says, leaning over the table and nearly into the ice cream that the waitress deftly slips between her and Bill. Laura picks up her spoon and dips it into the green tea ice cream; the sweet softness and the click of cold metal feel good in her mouth. Her face is hot. Too much sake, maybe, and a belly full of warm noodles, and the permeating warmth of good conversation. She smiles at Bill. She can't help herself. He smiles back at her. They eat their ice cream, dreamy-eyed like two teenagers at a soda shop.

The waitress brings tea and the check. Bill tries to take it, but Laura flattens her hand over it and hands the waitress her card before he can. "My treat."

He opens his mouth to protest. "Laura..."

"No," she says. "This is my treat. This isn't the Middle Ages, Bill. The man doesn't have to pay for dinner. The pleasure of your company is more than adequate compensation."

He scowls a little. "I'm getting the next dinner."

"Of course," she demurs. "In the name of equality."

He grumbles under his breath. "I owe you for introducing me to this place."

"Stop with this nonsense," she says briskly. "If you're going to sulk about not getting to be chivalrous enough, there won't be another dinner."

His mouth quirks. "Aye, sir." The challenge in his eyes sends a little thrill down her spine.

"That's better," she says.

"You must be a terror in the classroom," he says.

"A holy terror," she agrees. "They worshiped me. My classroom had Machiavelli-themed wallpaper. But now I'm in administration, and there's only you to intimidate."

"It's much more fun taking orders from you," Bill says, and her spine tingles again. "For one thing, you're prettier than any superior officer I've ever had."

"I'm tougher, too," she says, leaning forward. "Try me."

He chuckles. "Thank God for your boss."

"What?"

"For driving you to drink in a pier bar," he says. "Sometimes the world just works right. If you hadn't been angry at your boss, we wouldn't have met."

"Thank God for him," she says softly. Something shimmers in the air between them.

The moment is broken by the waitress returning with the receipt. Laura signs it and drops the pen on the table. "Walk me home? Or at least to the subway station."

He gets up and holds out his hand to her. "How about we split a cab? I haven't got my sea legs yet. Or I haven't gotten rid of them. I'm not sure."

"A rear admiral can't navigate?" she teases, but underneath it, she's pleased about the idea of sharing a back seat with him. She wishes she lived further away. He utterly fails at hailing a cab, so she steps out and waves one down, giving her address to the cabbie.

"Both of you?" the cabbie asks.

"No," Bill says, sounding almost regretful.

The cabbie shrugs and takes off, hanging a right too fast and sending Laura sliding across the seat until her thigh brushes Bill's. They both look at the place where their legs touch, and then another turn sends her off the other way, and by the time she's recovered enough of her equilibrium to stay steady, the cab stops at her curb. She thinks of clambering over Bill, using it as an excuse to touch him, but he's too much of a gentleman - he opens the door for her and bows her out.

"Have a good night," she says, and maybe it's the heat of the sake again, but she leans in and kisses his cheek. "I had a lovely time."

"We'll do it again soon," he promises. "Have a good night, Laura." The cabbie makes an irritated sound and Laura closes the door with regret, watching it disappear into the stream of traffic before she shakes herself out of her reverie and nearly floats up to her apartment. Oh yes, she'll have a good night. It's already been the best night she can remember. It's time for a hot bath thick with bubbles: she'll sink into the water and savor the memories of his voice, his rough hands holding his chopsticks, dreaming of how his fingers will caress her skin. She feels centered again, purposeful. She has skills. She has possibilities. Bill Adama has opened the world up for her. She bolts her front door and leans against it, cupping her cheek where he kissed it.

This will be the first of many good nights.


End file.
